JOIN USThe art of moving on
Cecilia Ahern debuted with ‘PS I Love You’ in 2004, which went on to be No.1 on several bestseller lists and got adapted into a movie with Hollywood stars Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler in the lead roles. Fifteen years later, Ahern returns with the sequel ‘Postscript’, which revisits the lives of protagonist Holly Kennedy, her family and friends.
In ‘PS I Love You’, Holly received letters from her husband after his death; a show-and-tell where the reader discovered what their love was like and accompanied her on her journey of experiencing grief and finding closure. Seven years later in ‘Postscript’, she records a podcast where she talks about the experience and is approached by the PS I Love You Club — people who suffer from terminal illnesses and want to leave behind letters for their loved ones, but don’t quite know what to say. They are inspired by her story and want the same for themselves. Will Holly help them? Or is she happy enough in her current life (and love) to let the past remain the past?
The book starts off slowly and calls on the reader to be very invested in Holly’s world and troubles right off the bat, which is difficult, unless you are a great fan of the first book or are reading the two back-to-back. We jump into Holly’s podcast and her mixed feelings when talking about her late husband Gerry. There are a lot of references to her life with Gerry and the current upheaval in talking of him; it is difficult to connect with all of this at first, if one is reading the book as a stand-alone.
The story settles in after a while though, and the reader gets sufficiently drawn into Holly’s tangle of emotions. This is helped through the device of several new characters who are preparing their own farewells to their lives and loves.
The older characters are harder to empathise with. They have their stories, are leading full and eventful lives and yet, seem out-of-reach for the reader...the reader who has not read or has forgotten the first book, that is. Then, Holly’s current love interest is so bland and two-dimensional that he wouldn’t be missed if he wasn’t there at all. He exists only for the purpose of driving the plot for Holly. The chief love interest remains her late husband Gerry, even as the protagonist tries to convince everyone that she is perfectly happy and barely thinks of him. The book dwells so much on Gerry that it proves otherwise.
Grief is one of the most strongly-felt and unavoidable of human emotions and the book delves into it without any hesitation. Yet, it can’t go too deep, not without alienating the reader who enjoys a light read. And so there is enough of the mundane life of the people left behind, enough affirmation of life, enough humour peppered throughout, to keep the reader smiling and hopeful even while feeling sad for the certainty of death. However, there are a lot of heavy-handed observations and some laughably convenient solutions to problems that are far stickier and unsolvable in real life.
While the story itself meanders, the book’s strength lies in the insights on grief and moving on. And of course, in its protagonist’s happily-ever-after.